Skip to main content

Story Lab: Writers Write

I chose to look around the Writers Write website. It offers advise to writers, writing courses, and writing motivation. One of the articles I most enjoyed was "45 Ways to Avoid Using the Word 'Very.'" I thought the quote it started with was very funny:

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to use the word 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." -Mark Twain

The article then gives a chart with adjectives commonly used after the word "very" and then gives a word that means "very (insert adjective)." Sometimes when I am writing, one of the harder parts is picking strong adjectives; this chart gives me a go-to list.

I also liked the article "20 Myths to Use as Writing Prompts." The articles does not give specific stories to base your writing off, like I usually do for this class, but rather gives general myths to use as a starting point. A few of the ideas I thought were most interesting were "Write a myth to explain why the moon changes shape" and "Write a myth to explain how bees got their sting."

I thought this website was helpful because it has resources for different types of writing. While I mostly looked at the Creative Writing part for this class, there was also information about Business Writing, Blogging and Social Media, and Miscellany.

Once Upon a Time by Ramdlon

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tech Tip: Word Counter

This word counter is so helpful! I usually go to a word counter website and write my text in there, then copy and paste it. This extension makes it easy to just write where I will posting my text so I don't have to flip between tabs. I usually am worried about meeting the minimum word count, but I usually don't have an issue hitting, I am just afraid that I won't. I think I am generally bad in estimating numbers in general, so I probably would be very off in my estimate if I just tried tried to guess how long my writing is.

Story Lab: TED Talk Videos

For this Story Lab, I watched Ted Talks about stories and storytelling . The first video is the TED Talk of a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. From a young age, she has been a storyteller. She read foreign books for much of her childhood and based the stories she wrote based on what she read in these books. She eventually discovered books and she learned that writers could look like her. When she came to university in the United States, her roommate was surprised to learn Nigeria has English as an official language and that she was familiar with many of the comforts of American life. She believes people like her roommate have a view of Africans because of writing that portrays them as living in a dark place. When Chimamanda wrote a book, her professor told her the book was not "African enough" because the characters were similar to him, a middle-class man, and they drove cars. When she visited Mexico, she realized she saw the people there as poor immigran...

Growth Mindset

I had never heard of Carol Dweck or the growth mindset before this week, but I love learning more about personal growth and leadership development, so I really enjoyed hearing about the idea. I'd be interested to see how much of a different a growth mindset can make, especially in school or the work field. I feel as if I have a growth mindset at times, but a fixed mindset at others. Sometimes, when faced with a difficult task in school or extracurricular activities, I think of it as a growth opportunity, while I sometimes feel like I absolutely cannot do it and shut down because of my mindset. I would like to try to focus on having a growth mindset this semester, and know I will need to find specific ways to do this. I think this could potentially be very beneficial to me as I try to practice my Italian language skills even though I am not currently taking a language class. I know keeping up with the language and continuing to practice on my own will be difficult, but I can use t...